Tele Vue's Sky Tour is designed to help you find the best objects for viewing with their telescopes. It contains a database of over 2000 objects especially selected by Tom Lorenzin, and the accurate encoders attached to the telescope mount will guide you unerringly to all of them.

The 2000+ objects are organized into six catalogs: NGC (New General Cat.), M (Messier), IC (lndex Cat.), ST (Star), NS (Non-Standard), and PL (Planets). For quick reference, an additional FAV catalog is available to store 250 of your favorite objects.

Tele Vue believes that the fun of astronomy is in the observing. Set-up and equipment operation is kept to a minimum. Sky Tour instructions are easy to follow and include step-by-step diagrams. A simple phone plug connects the computer to the Gibraltar Mount. Turn Sky Tour on, align the marks on the mount head, sight two known stars from a choice of 31 and Sky Tour is ready to lead you on your evening's journey. A little familiarity with the stars, and the alignment will take slightly longer than it did to read this paragraph!

SkyTour's functions are organized into nine "modes." They are: Star Fix, RA DEC, Catalog, Guide, Align, Identify, Timer, Install, and Encoder. Once Sky Tour is aligned, you'll enter the Catalog mode and choose an object to view. The Guide mode shows you the direction to move the scope in order to find the selected object. Finding over 2000 objects is as simple as that!

Sky Tour also gives you digital setting circles by converting Alt/Az positioning into Right Ascension and declination. The RA DEC mode lets you hunt for any object in the sky just by looking up its RA and DEC position.

The Identify mode will point you to the nearest object of your choosing. For example, say you wanted to know if there was a galaxy nearby. Enter the Identify mode, choose "Find GX" from the nine object types. If there is a galaxy nearby, Sky Tour will identify it and guide the way. It's a wonderful way to learn about unfamiliar regions of the sky.

The Identify mode is fun for explorers who like to scan the sky just to see what they can find. When you think you've found something just ask Sky Tour's Identify mode to "Find Any"

The Gibraltar Mount as well as the Panoramic and Tele-Pod mounts can be ordered with Sky Tour encoders pre-installed. Sky Tour Kits have all the hardware needed to do the simple installation yourself. Pre-installed systems include the Sky Tour computer, encoders, eyepiece caddy set and sky tour caddy.